What A Character

 Happy First Day of Meteorological Autumn! I celebrated the extremely pleasant, not-summery weather by eating my lunch outside in the arbor. About half-way through my cold, leftover pizza I had to temporarily abandon my meal to go inside and get my camera, because I spotted something interesting in the arbor, or rather, on a plant growing on the arbor. Half-way to the house I considered that I didn't need to rush, because I knew that the insect I had seen wasn't going anywhere, but I was so excited to see it that I wasn't going to wait to finish my pizza.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This cartoonish character, which is bout 3 inches long, is a Pandorus Sphinx Moth Caterpillar. 

I had an appointment in the middle of the afternoon, and as I was walking down the front walk I noticed some bees congregating in a small group. I stopped to look and saw they were gathered on the remains of what appeared to be a caterpillar. Because of my appointment I didn't have time to go inside and get my camera to take pictures of them, but after my lunch, since I had my camera outside, I went to see if the bees were still there. They were not, and the caterpillar was gone. Or so I thought–I then noticed that the caterpillar had actually been moved up the walk a ways, and was now covered with ants. While I was looking at it, a couple of bees came back, but I think they decided that they were not going to fight the ants for it. Also, looking at it up close I am not so sure it is a caterpillar. It looks more like the body of a butterfly or moth. It's clear where the legs used to be, but they are gone, which makes it a little harder to know for sure, but I think this is an adult lepidoptera, not a caterpillar.

Then I was walking up the driveway and saw what at first I thought was a pile of dirt that had been dumped there. I wondered how and when that happened, and then realized it was not dirt...

The day after my last post (or possibly the day after that) all of the monarch caterpillars disappeared. None of them were really close to being ready to pupate, so though they may have gone off to find somewhere else to feed, I think something ate them. Of all of the monarch caterpillars I have seen this summer, there was only one that I thought went off at a point when it was ready to pupate. I looked for the chrysalis of that one, but it's sort of a needle-in-a-haystack sort of search–or worse, actually, because at least you would know to look in the haystack for the needle. I have no idea how far a monarch caterpillar will wander to pupate. I have never actually seen one of their chrysalides in the wild before, just in the butterfly enclosure I have raised them in in my dining room. Until today:

Unfortunately, this is the chrysalis of a caterpillar that did not become a butterfly. I don't know exactly what happened to it, but it appears to me that it was infected with a disease or a parasite. Either the parasite hatched out of the chrysalis, or something else got into it from the outside. Either way, this is not how the chrysalis would look if the butterfly formed and eclosed. It made me really sad to find this. I stopped adopting caterpillars because so many things I read said I was doing more harm than good, but I had a success rate of over 90% developing into butterflies. Of the caterpillars in the last couple of years that I have observed but not adopted in my backyard, I don't think more than one or two even possibly became butterflies. I don't know the right thing to do, but it is discouraging and heartbreaking to see this. I know it's nature, and nature has a system that has balance, even if it seems brutal at times, but...

These are the pupal cases of two ladybeetles that appear to have had more success–they are split such that it appears the ladybeetles made it to adulthood and emerged.

Ailanthus tree sapling with an ailanthus webworm web full of chrysalides. I think some of these have emerged as moths. Only one caterpillar in this web.

It's September, and the flower of September is asters. This plant had lots of stilt bugs on it.

Last summer there were two beech trees in my woods that were infested with beech woolly aphids. This summer they are ALL OVER the place:

We happened to be standing under a tree that had some kind of liquid running down the trunk, which we thought was sap. We were trying to figure out why there was sap running down the trunk when I started to feel tiny droplets on my face, and realized that I was getting showered in honeydew from the aphids on the branch above me. Which means that I was getting peed on by a couple hundred tiny bugs. Ick.

I am also finding these aphids on tree trunks:

Still finding lots of ailanthus webworm moths on goldenrod:

We have spent the last couple of years clearing out invasive plants, and in some of the places we cleared, unfortunately it is the invasive ailanthus tree that has has taken hold in the cleared areas. And I think that is why there are so many ailanthus webworm moths around. And it's just another invasive plant we need to eradicate. Sigh. I like the moths, though.

I took my camera on my woods walk in spite of my painful shoulder; my concession was to not wear my camera harness, which is supported by my left shoulder, which is the painful one, which meant I had to carry the camera the whole time, which is much more tiring than it sounds. Anyway, the reason I took the camera along was because I had seen a cool spider in the woods on my walks the previous couple of days, and wanted to get a picture of it. I saw the spider, but it fled from the camera, and I failed to get the picture. I then went out later, after dark, in the hopes that the spider would be out again. It was still in its bower, and the pictures I got were no good, but I did find something else cool on the walk:

There were a couple of these beetles (I should know what these are, but I can't remember, and I should look this up, but I am not going to... possibly a fungus beetle), both with mites on them. The other beetle was smaller, and had only one mite, but this one was covered with them, and seemed to be unhappy about it (I know, this should be in Arachnid Appreciation because of the mites. But the beetle definitely did not appreciate them).

Anyway, a couple of nights ago when we were in the woods after dark with our flashlights, I saw a really big bug which zoomed towards us. It flew around us, landed on both of us, and then...

Here's a few more things seen in the backyard and woods in the last couple of days at times when I did not have a camera:

This semi-cooperative hairstreak butterfly was feeding on the autumn joy sedum as I was going out, and didn't have time to run in and get my camera. Kind of a pattern here, lately..

Last week, after the rain (we had close to 4 inches over 2 days, and 3.25 inches of that was on one day) there were lots of frogs out when we went into the woods.

At the end of our first walk today dusk was setting in, and just as we were emerging from the woods we saw something dart out of an area of wildflowers and begin climbing a tree. It paused, and we saw it was a young raccoon. It stared at us for a few moments and then scampered way up into the tree at an impressive speed. Here it is up in the tree:

Did I mention it was dusk? I had the flash on my camera, which reflected in the raccoon's eyes.

Here I've lightened up the picture a little.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I saw this spider on a night hike a few nights ago and took this picture with my phone, illuminated by flashlight. I don't know what that other thing is at the bottom of the picture.

There are still a lot of spined micrathena spiders in the woods, although for a few days after last week's heavy rain I didn't see any. But now they are back, still building their webs right across the path:

Bowl-and-doily spider. These have always been one of the most common spiders in my backyard, but I haven't been seeing them this year. I found this one in a meadow in a clearing in the woods.